Extraordinarily one sided and misleading article by Beeb health correspondent here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54228649

LoL the argument that even though 40k extra people died [it's substantially more than that, but never mind] that just takes us to mortality two decades ago. Great! A 20% fall in GDP just reverses 20 years of growth too!

The basic strategy of *lockdown followed by test trace isolate, wait for therapies and vaccines to lower mortality rates* is not really mentioned. Just weird covidiot statements like 'lockdown just postpones the problem'. Or 'we have to learn to live with the virus'.

'You have to learn to live with it' kind of implies the straw man position 'we are going to try to live as though it wasn't there and will go away!'. A way to paint the let the virus rip strategy as somehow wise, against the naivite of simply wishing it away.

Somehow this is presented as evidence in favour of the covid sceptics!

Covid19 is going to spread because its winter so.... just let it spread?

No surprise to see Carl Heneghan quoted. The very same that says we should just wait until Christmas to impose a new lockdown by extending the holiday! https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-christmas-is-the-best-time-for-new-lockdown-measures-says-oxford-expert-12076969

What a stupid argument that is. The main reason the first wave was so bad was because we wasted 2 weeks or more waiting to impose a lockdown, allowing the case load to multiply, meaning that the lockdown had to be harsher/longer than otherwise.

Imagine allowing the current R to propagate cases out for the best part of 3 months, with cases doubling every 10 days, say, that would be allowing 4k cases per day to move to 4k*2^9=2m, so essentially this is just let it rip.

But that'll be worth it because you can just slip the lockdown in between xmas and New Year and people will hardly notice and.....

Anyway back to the original article. Written by someone who doesn't seem to understand any of the arguments put to him. It's 'he said she said' with no assessment, and not even the fall-back of false balance. I hope it is not widely read by anyone trying to find things out.

Dear @BBCNews I'll gladly give up my time for free to write for you if it will stop that guy writing stuff on covid19. Lives are at stake. Can't you do better?